Tag: Lenten journey

Ash Wednesday, Community, Cross, Introspection, journey, Lent, Life Journeys, Pilgrimage, Rebirth, reconciliation, Reflection, Resurrection, Soul, Spiritual awakening, Spiritual Discipline, Spiritual growth, Transformation

The “Soul’s Insistent Yearning”

Revkathy

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I have come to know Ash Wednesday as the time to draw nearer to my “soul’s insistent yearning.” That can be a frightening prospect, so I always approach Ash Wednesday with a bit of reticence, meeting the day with the self-awareness that I am trying to keep my distance from my “soul’s insistent yearning.” Being closer to one’s soul can well be a disconcerting proposition, but a necessary one. Ash Wednesday presents me with entry into the season of Lent.

I cherish Lent’s forty days, actually, always expecting change to happen in my soul and spirit. And yet, the prospect of repentance, renewal, transformation — and ultimately a personal resurrection — always disquiets me.

83D4AF68-A9AD-40EC-9D26-F0787CFE6D7BHow will I spend Ash Wednesday?

How will I approach the day
that will open the gate of Lent before me?

I have always thought of Lent as a spiritual journey we take alone, a solitary season of introspection and self-reflection during which we contemplate our own spiritual well-being and our relationship with God. For me, Lent has often been alone work.

So I make my Lenten journey into my alone places. I will know that God will abide with me, comforting me in my self-reflection, in my penitence and in my repentance. I will be mindful this Lent of my need to reach into my soul in search of places needing healing, constant and long-time wounds of the soul and spirit. I will search for the traces of my sinfulness, finding in my heart the will to seek sincere penitence, the sad and humble realization of and regret for my misdeeds. I will move beyond penitence to repentance as I resolve to change and to experience transformation.

How will I spend Ash Wednesday?

In whatever way I am able, I will receive ashes on my forehead imposed in a sign of the cross. I will recall the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I will utter as my prayer, the words of Scripture, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10)

As for the actual ashes, I have often wiped them off while in public. I never knew why, just that I was uncomfortable when others saw the cross of ash on my forehead. Perhaps I needed to keep my spiritual practice to myself, or hide the reality of my search for repentance. Years ago, I came across these words, spoken by Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, RSM:

We can feel a little funny with ashes on our foreheads, but for Catholics, that’s how we mark the start of Lent. Ashes don’t say we’re holy. They say we are sinners. They don’t say we are perfect, only that we’re willing to try. They don’t say we’re models of religiosity, but they do say we belong. In today’s world of loners and isolates, that says a lot.

~ Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, RSM

7FA58B58-0019-4809-B3B9-F956F3B06D7BThe essential truth, and gift, of Ash Wednesday is its call to come to terms with ourselves before God. Ash Wednesday says what so much of modern culture denies, namely that we are forever deceiving and justifying ourselves about our sinfulness. So on this day, when we contemplate our sins, when we pay attention to the ash on our foreheads, when we enter into Lent’s forty days, we must make prayer our utmost spiritual intention. So I pray we might embrace our Christian community that we might journey together for these forty days, praying for one another, seeking together the serenity, the reflection and the transformation of Lent, as all the while, we lean into our “soul’s insistent yearning.”

In that spirit of prayer, I hope you will take with you into Lent with this beautiful prayer from Rabbi Naomi Levy:

The rabbi in me would like to offer a prayer for you.
I pray you will learn to see you life as a meaningful story.
I pray you will learn to listen to your soul’s insistent yearning.
I pray you will learn to believe you can transform your life.
I pray you will learn to live and shine inside your imperfect life
and find meaning and joy right where you are.
Most of all I pray you will uncover a great miracle: your extra-ordinary life.

~ From Hope Will Find You by Rabbi Naomi Levy

Most importantly, pray yourself into Lent in the few days we have before Ash Wednesday. Seek God’s heart and seek the depths of your own heart and your “soul’s insistent yearning.” May you know God’s presence as you begin your Lenten journey.

Covenant, Friendship, Introspection, Jephthah's Daughter, Judges 11, Lent, life, Reflection, Rhythm, Women

Together Through Lent

Revkathy
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Watercolor art by Kathy Manis Findley. The watercolor — “Together” — represents the spiritual covenants we share with one another, bonds that strengthen our faith. 

I have always thought of Lent as a spiritual journey we take alone, a solitary season of introspection and self-reflection during which we contemplate our own spiritual well-being and our relationship with God. For me, Lent has always been alone work. But what if it wasn’t? Suppose I experienced Lent with my community — the close community of people with whom I share my spiritual life.

I cannot help but recall the story of Jephthah’s daughter as told in Judges 11. When she faces a terrible crisis that will result in her death at the hands of her father, she makes only one request of her father. “Do what you must do, only grant me this one request: Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my sisters.”

So she will take this journey up into the hills with her sisters — to mourn, to reflect, to pray. She will not make this journey alone. She makes the journey with the sisters who surrounded her in life and now in death. They climb up into the hills together.

Lent’s forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry. He was there alone, and most often the Lenten journey is a time for reflecting alone. But I think that perhaps there is spiritual benefit in making a Lenten journey together, in community, joining together through invisible rhythms of friendship and caring.

As I make my Lenten journey this year, in my mind I will take my community with me. There into my alone places where God comforts me in my contemplative moments, in my repentance and in my penitence, I will be more mindful this Lent of my spiritual circle of friends. I will make a covenant with them in my mind and heart. I will send them positive thoughts as they make their Lenten journey and I will pray for them intentionally and faithfully.

It will be a together Lent, inspired by the sisters who went into the hills with Jephthah’s daughter where they spent a season of grief in community, together.

I hope that, together, we might embrace a sense of community as one of our Lenten spiritual disciplines, that we might journey together for these forty days, praying for one another, seeking together the serenity, the reflection and the transformation of Lent.

In that spirit of prayer, I leave with you this beautiful prayer written by Rabbi Naomi Levy:

The rabbi in me would like to offer a prayer for you.
I pray you will learn to see you life as a meaningful story.
I pray you will learn to listen to your soul’s insistent yearning.
I pray you will learn to believe you can transform your life.
I pray you will learn to live and shine inside your imperfect life
and find meaning and joy right where you are.
Most of all I pray you will uncover a great miracle: your extra-ordinary life.

— From Hope Will Find You by Rabbi Naomi Levy

Challenge, Faith, God's Faithfulness, God's presence, Hope, Lent, Life Journeys, Life pathways, Music, Restoration, Serenity, Transformation

I Can Face Tomorrow

Revkathy

Enlight272Yesterday was not my best day. All day long challenges got the best of me — health challenges, schedule challenges, even bad haircut challenges. My sister of the heart, Donna, said I was cranky. My husband, Fred, said I should chalk it up to Ash Wednesday. Martie, my dear Little Rock friend, said that yesterday was the first day of Mercury in retrograde and that I should do my best to survive until it’s over on March 28th.

I’m not so convinced of any of those explanations, but I’ll let it be for now. Today is a new day, a day in which I have chosen peace for the beginning of my Lenten journey. Typically, the way I find peace is through music. So Pandora is on my sacred music station today. It would be an understatement to say that the music has lifted me today and has almost made yesterday’s fiascoes a dim memory.

As I listened, a song from my past brought sweet memories. Years ago, before I learned to renounce masculine pronouns to refer to God, I was inspired greatly by these words: “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.” We sang this Gospel song often to remind us of hope, of perseverance, of God’s faithfulness and of Christ’s resurrection. Today, those words and that melody on Pandora reminded me of those exact things. In spite of masculine pronoun referring to God, the music moved me as it has always done. The message has not changed. God has not changed. My faith in Christ has not changed. Thanks be to God!

Here’s my truth as I follow my Lenten path, the abiding truth: “Tomorrow” for me seems murky, with the path ahead unknown and somewhat disconcerting. I do not know if I will receive a kidney transplant or live on daily dialysis for the rest of my life. I do not know what tomorrow promises.

But this is as it has always been — before illness and after. I never knew what tomorrow would bring, even in those days when I thought I was fearlessly and fully in control of my life. So it feels like a Lenten testimony of my faith to say that I do not know what tomorrow looks like for me. Leaning into the reality of the unknown future, I feel embraced in the consoling truth that “because He lives, I can face tomorrow.”

Of this, I am confident. Resting on this promise, I can move onto the Lenten path before me with refreshed hope and renewed faith. Amen.

Introspection, Lent, Reflection, Self care, Serenity, Stillness

Tending to Yourself through Lent

Revkathy

5C466354-43F2-463A-9C04-1ACD2A85CE01Do you ever just get tired of tending to yourself? I suppose that’s not a relevant question for a general audience. It is, however, a very relevant question for those of us who are aging and/or have chronic illnesses.

I am in those categories: aging and ill. My life changed, as many of you know, in 2014 when I was diagnosed with end stage renal disease. That means my choice was dialysis for the rest of my life, a kidney transplant, or the unmentionable alternative which, very honestly, is death. I am told that without either dialysis or transplant, a person would be looking at two weeks.

So I tend to myself with all the medications, the medical appointments, the processes, the prevention measures — every day. Sometimes it feels like all day. Without a husband who is an indispensable care partner, I would be sunk. To be honest, my needs require both of us to be constantly attentive, and it is exhausting.

Still, I tend to myself, and I do sometimes get tired of having to. But I tend to myself largely without complaint and with unspeakable joy for the grace of being alive, of enjoying my family, my grandchildren, my creative pursuits and my “one wild and precious life” as poet Mary Oliver would call it.

Tending to myself is not just being sure to address my physical health needs. It is even more important to me to tend to my spiritual well-being. One of the things that means for me is choosing a spiritual path for my Lenten journey. I have just one day to choose. Today is Ash Wednesday, an important day for penitents. “From dust you have come and to dust you shall return” is Ash Wednesday’s message. And then we must begin our Lenten spiritual path.

I have to be honest by admitting that I have not yet chosen my path. It won’t be giving up chocolate. It won’t be as much giving as it will be receiving grace on the journey. So as I have contemplated what I will do, I have gathered some resources that I will share here.

I hope you will tend to yourself through your Lenten journey, and I pray that Lent’s forty days will find you walking your sacred path. Breathe deeply. Reflect on your life. Pay attention to your heart. Attend to your soul. Count your gifts. Speak your prayers. Consider Christ’s journey to the cross. Listen for God’s whisper. Receive the grace that comes to you.

All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.
— Ecclesiastes 3:20

A FEW RESOURCES YOU MIGHT USE DURING LENT:

  • First of all, I would like to share with you the joy of walking a labyrinth or using a finger labyrinth during the days of Lent. 9889AA3B-16BB-4F9F-9B56-D883A74A49AE

You might find a labyrinth near you in a church, a park or at a spiritual retreat center. You can search at the labyrinth locator website listed below. You may also invest some creative time by making a finger labyrinth like the one pictured. Instructions  are at a link below.

Walking the labyrinth is a spiritual discipline that invites us to trust the path, to surrender to the many turns our lives take, and to walk through the confusion, the fear, the anger and the grief that we cannot avoid experiencing as we live our earthly lives.    — The Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress

Walking the labyrinth clears the mind and gives insight into the spiritual journey. It is a form of walking meditation that can enhance and deepen awareness of God. Labyrinth prayer is a contemplative spiritual discipline on a simple marked path. It is based on the ancient practice of pilgrimage. 

On a pilgrimage, a pilgrim intentionally (1) leaves the world, journeying away from the noise and distractions of life, (2) eventually arrives and rests with Christ, and (3) returns home to live more deeply in God’s presence.

The labyrinth invites us to release, receive and return. Walking the labyrinth is not a newfangled technique to jumpstart your spiritual life. It is a slow, quiet, meditative practice that has historically attended to the desire to make a journey toward God. Laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France around 1220, the labyrinth has been used by pilgrims for centuries.

When you experience the labyrinth, you must give yourself to the path, leaving behind the noise and hurry of life. Just as you would pack simply for a pilgrimage, you offer your load to God as you begin your prayer journey. You move slowly toward the center and toward God. 

At times you are close to the center. Further along the path, you may be farther from the center. This represents the reality of the spiritual journey. As you walk the labyrinth, you can see the center, but you can’t see how exactly you will get there, Sometimes you find you are making surprising turns that seem to take you farther away, not closer. However, if you stay on the path, you will get to the center. Then, you will follow the path from the center and move “into the world” to do justice and love mercy. Labyrinths can be a walking meditation, a spiritual practice or simply an opportunity to calm the mind and enjoy peace, quiet and reflection. 

For resources on the labyrinth, visit https://www.gracecathedral.org/our-labyrinths/

To find labyrinths, visit The Labyrinth Society’s website: https://labyrinthlocator.com

For instructions on making a finger labyrinth, visit https://heatherplett.com/2015/01/make-finger-labyrinth-also-piece-art/

  • Living Well Through Lent 2019:
    Practicing Forgiveness with All Your Heart, Soul, Strength, and Mind
    Living Compass offers a daily email devotional throughout Lent. You will receive forty-seven daily emails, one for each day of Lent, plus Easter. The emails will begin on Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019. If at any point you no longer want to receive the emails, you can unsubscribe at any time.  https://www.livingcompass.org/lent”>https://www.livingcompass.org/lent</
  • And my personal favorite, LIFT EVERY VOICE

PrintLift Every Voice is a Lenten resource from 2016 that is still relevant in 2019. It addresses America’s original sin of racism through the lens of Ignatian spirituality and includes daily readings. From Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday, voices from throughout the Ignatian network will lament racial injustice in our communities and reflect on how the Gospel calls us to repent, pray, and act in solidarity with those affected by an enduring legacy of systemic and personal racial discrimination. https://ignatiansolidarity.net/lent-2016/